THE SECOND OBSERVATION.
THe Testudo requireth a larger discourse, and is lively described in Livie after this manner.* 1.1 In the Amphitheatre,* 1.2 where the people did of∣ten assemble to see strange sights and publick shews, were brought in (saith he) sixty lusty young men, who after some motion and seemly march, cast themselves into a square troup, and roofing their heads close with their targets, the first rank which made the front of the Testudo, stood up right on their feet; the second rank bowed it self somewhat lower; the third and fourth ranks did more incline themselves, and so consequently unto the last rank, which knee∣led on the ground: and so they made a body re∣sembling halfe the side of an house, which they called Testudo. Unto this squadron so strongly combined together came two souldiers running some an hundred and fifty foot off, and threat∣ning each other with their weapons, ran nimbly up the side of the roof; and sometimes making as though they would defend it against an enemy that would have entred upon it, sometimes again encountering each other in the midst of it, leaped up and down as steadily as if they had been up∣on firm ground. And which is more strange, the front of a Testudo being applyed to the side of a wall, there ascended many armed men upon the said Testudo, and fought in an equall height with other souldiers that stood upon the said wall to defend it. The dissimilitude in the composition was this, that the souldiers that were in front, and in the sides of the square, carried not their Tar∣gets over their heads as the other did, but covered their bodies with them; and so no weapons ei∣ther cast from the wall, or otherwise thrown a∣gainst it, could any way hurt them; and what∣soever weight fell upon the Testudo, it quickly glyded down by the declivity of the roof, without any hurt or annoiance at all.
Thus far Livie goeth; neither do I know what to say further of it: the chiefest use there∣of was in a surprise or sudden attempt against a town, before the townsmen were throughly pre∣pared to defend the same. This invention served them to approach the wall with safety, and so ei∣ther to undermine it, or to climb up: and to that end they oftentimes erected one Testudo upon a∣nother. Tacitus saith that the souldiers climbed upon the wall super iteratam testudinem, by one Testudo made upon another. And this was the ancient form and use of a Testudo in a sudden assault or surprise.
Dio Cassius in the acts of Antony saith,* 1.3 that being galled with the Parthian Archers, he com∣manded his whole Army to put it self into a Te∣studo: which was so strange a sight to the Par∣thians, that they thought the Romans had sunk down for wearinesse and faintnesse; and so forsaking their horses, drew their swords to have made execution: and then the Romans, at a watch-word given, rose again with such a fury, that they put them all to sword and ••light. Dio describeth the same Testudo after this manner: They placed, saith he, their baggage, their light-armed men and their horsemen in the midst; and those heavy-armed footmen that carried long gutter-tiled Targets, were in the utmost cir∣cles next unto the Enemy: the rest (which bare large ovall Targets) were thronged together throughout the whole troup, and so covered with their Targets both themselves and their fellowes, that there was nothing discerned by the Enemy but a roof of Targets, which were so tiled toge∣ther, that men might safely go upon them.
Further, we oftentimes read that the Romans cast themselves into a Testudo, to break through an Enemy, or to rout and disrank a troup. And this use the Romans had of a Testudo in field ser∣vices, and only by the benefit of their Target. It was called a Testudo in regard of the strength, for that it covered and sheltred as a shell covereth a fish. And let this suffice concerning a Te∣studo.